


Carry That Weight

by TigerLilyNoh



Series: The Uncomfortable Adventures of Sam in Law School [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Bisexual Sam, Bisexual Sam Winchester, Depression, Hunters & Hunting, Law Student Sam, M/M, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sam Winchester's Visions, Sam Winchester-centric, Sam-Centric, Student Sam, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 02:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Series theme: Sam chose law school over hunting, but it wasn't exactly how he'd imagined it.This ficlet: Sam struggles with his self-doubt and the magnitude of the challenges before him.TRIGGER WARNING:  Discussion of depression, child abuse, death, & suicide.





	Carry That Weight

Sam was generally alright until he’d gotten back to his dorm room.  But when he was lying in bed, alone, he started replaying the conversation with Bhavya in his mind.  A demon had done something to his soul, something that had changed him.  He was connected to those people from his visions that had been dying, often horrible deaths at a young age.  Maybe he was supposed to die like them?  And when he dies he’ll go to some sort of hellscape, harvested like the others.  The thought shook him and he knelt down beside his bed to pray, but when his hands were folded before him he remembered the way Bhavya had talked about angels trying to kill people like him… he didn’t want to risk it.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and he considered asking Brady to come down.  Part of him wanted to be held until he fell asleep, part of him wanted to have sex until he couldn’t feel anything else.  But Brady would be able to see his distress and there was no good way of explaining what was wrong with him.  Tossing his phone to the side, he pressed his face into the mattress trying to block out the world or anything at all that might provoke his troubled mind.  He was scared & overwhelmed- he didn’t want to feel anything at the moment.  

He pushed himself up off the bed, walked across the room, and crouched down in front of the cupboard below his microwave.  After a long sigh he pulled out a partially consumed bottle of whiskey.  He stared at it for several painful minutes before carrying it to one of the co-ed bathrooms and pouring it down the sink.  Dropping the empty in the recycling bin in the hallway, he silently returned to his room.  He closed the door, but left it unlocked in case he experienced a lapse in judgment and needed help, then curled up in his bed and cried until he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

* * *

“You missed your AA meeting.”

Dr. Neves sounded more concerned than usual.  He didn’t blame her.  This last minute session was mandatory, scheduled at the direction of the school’s dean.  It had been two days since he’d spoken to Bhavya and they were easily the worst days he’d experienced since Jessica’s death.  He wasn't even hiding his downward spiral.

“I know.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No.”

“Are you taking drugs?”

“Only to help with my pain- the migraines.”  He clarified.

“You were crying in the mail room.”

He'd tried to go to his classes as usual, but Wills & Trusts had proved too much for his delicate emotional state.  The lecture had briefly delved into the issues of last rites and rituals associated with death.  It made him think about the dead people from his visions, how they might be buried or cremated- did he have any directions in his records to be cremated?  Nothing like a traditional hunters pyre- not if he had anything to say about it.  The whole thing was too much for him to think about, so he'd stepped out into the hall for a minute.  But the fact that he'd had to leave class over something like that made him feel weak.  It was like back in his first year, when he'd had to leave during a lecture because of a PTSD trigger.  

In all the years since going to school and trying to be normal, this was the worst relapse and he knew it.  He had been so embarrassed that he'd hastily gone into the mailroom to try collecting himself, but instead his self-loathing had finally finished him.  One of the professors found him sitting on the floor in the corner crying, then brought him to the student services office.  With his background, they'd asked him to stay in their office with them until Dr. Neves could get to campus for an emergency meeting with him.  He didn't blame anyone for being worried and was fine cooperating.  The last thing he wanted was for someone to feel bad on his account- for them to think that they’d failed him.

“I’m having a hard time.”

“Can you talk to me about it?”

“My anxiety is worse and I’ve been a bit depressed.”  Of course, she already knew that.  She knew him probably better than anyone.  He hated hiding things from her, but it terrified him to think what would happen if he started telling her that he'd met with a 400 year old witch to talk about the demon who was potentially trying to kill him.  He knew exactly how crazy it sounded- he barely believed it.  On the really bad days, when his depression was winning, he wondered if maybe he was actually delusional.  That’d be the simplest explanation- but like Bhavya had warned him, clarity didn’t mean accuracy.  His life was never that straightforward.

“Do you like chocolate?”  Neves held out a partially eaten box of early Valentine’s Day chocolates toward him.

“No, thank you.”  He turned down the offer without even considering it.

“Let me rephrase my question, when you aren’t depressed do you normally like chocolate?”  He stared at the box of sweets rather than look her in the eyes, then reluctantly accepted one of the pieces and began slowly eating it.  “Thank you for trying.  I really appreciate it.”

“I haven’t stopped eating.”  He assured.

“That doesn’t mean you’re still enjoying eating.  Things like meals shouldn’t be a chore, it’s a bad sign.”  Neves countered.  

Despite the delicate nature of the situation, he appreciated that she had come so quickly to check on him.  Yes, this was her job, but she cared about him and would probably try to give him a bit more leeway than a stranger might.  There wasn't any doubt in his mind that she was trying to decide if there was sufficient reason to place a 72 hour psychiatric hold on him.  He wasn't sure he could take that.  Every hunter that he'd heard of who'd slipped up enough to get a 72 hour hold had subsequently given cause during the three day in-hospital observation period to justify either a 14 day hold or indefinite hospitalization.  He maybe didn't have as much hunter baggage as active hunters, but this whole demon thing more than made up for it in terms of stress & grounds for a hold.  The whole thing meant that he had to be more careful with Neves than usual.  He had to be careful not to give her too much, yet at the same time he didn't want to scare her with uncharacteristic silence.

“Are you having trouble with classes?”  She tackled the most typical & least likely issue first.

“I fell behind on my reading in Wills & Trusts and Business Organizations.”  He offered the accurate, but wholly insufficient explanation of his problems.  “I'm trying to catch up, but I've been so busy lately.”

“What's keeping you busy?”

“Studying.”  Sam replied, too fatigued to come up with a better cover.  “I mean studying for other classes.  There's a lot more reading than usual and it's just overwhelming.”

“Are you being systematically in how you're tackling the workload?”

“I'm trying to be.”  

“Is something else bothering you?”

He hated being so uncooperative- he especially hated being so obvious about it.  She was one of the nicest people in his life and he hated lying to her, almost more than anything.  He looked her in the eyes for the first time since arriving.  Her gaze searched him for any insight, probably frightened by the way he was keeping her at arm’s length.  It was those first few weeks all over again, but instead of her trying to forge new ground she was trying to stop him from backsliding.  He wanted to confide in her somehow, to give her that.

“I'm scared.”  Sam confessed.  His mouth opened & closed a few times trying to find the words to express the wrongness he felt.  To her credit, she didn’t try to rush him.  She knew he was trying.  “I don't want to die, but I feel like it could happen soon.”

“Is your illness getting worse?”

“I think so, maybe.”  He was still having crippling migraines from the visions, but there was some small comfort in at least knowing that they were linked to something.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure if they were any less dangerous as a symptom of some demonic corruption, let alone how to treat them.  But regardless of the status of his neurological condition, it was probably the closest analogy he could use to tell her about his fears related to the demon.  “I've been thinking about my life, everything I've done and everything I want to do.  And when I think about what’s waiting for me… I… I wonder...”

“What do you wonder?”

“I wonder if I'm a bad person.”  He admitted his shame as a few tears slid down his cheeks.

“Why would you think that?”

“I used to think that there was something wrong with me.  I wasn’t ever good enough-”  He laughed weakly at the memory of the night he left his family.  “It’s funny, I’d never thought I’d actually be able to leave, but I left and… I don’t regret leaving- I never have.”

“I think it was very brave of you to leave.  It’s a hard thing to cut ties with toxic family members.”

“Toxic.”  Sam considered the word.  “I was scared to be myself around them, you know?  I guess that fucked me up.  I’m not really sure how to just be myself... I don’t even know what- who I am. “

“Tell me about who you might be.”  She instructed.  “There’s nothing wrong with talking these things through.  Sometimes voicing your fears, getting them articulated, is the best way to see that they don’t hold true.”

“I worry that I’m someone who’s not good enough- someone who’s irredeemable.”

“What do you need redemption for?”  She encouraged.  He was sure that she was genuinely concerned for him, but he could see her probing for signs that he was a danger to himself or others.  There was a catharsis in the confession, but he knew the risks involved in speaking candidly, so he decided to frame it all in more mundane terms.

“My dad was really into hunting.  He taught us to use guns and things like that.  He… made me kill animals.  I never wanted to- I don't want to hurt anything, I never have.  But he…” Sam shook his head.  “I sometimes wonder if I could've stopped earlier.  If I had said something or left sooner.  Maybe there could’ve been less killing.  I didn't do enough to stop it.”

He knew that sometimes it had been necessary to save more lives, but there were other times when the whole thing fell into a disturbing grey area.  To his dad it was never grey, but Sam had seen too many times when maybe there was more to the story.  Maybe conflicts could've been resolved with less blood and more understanding.  He'd visited Stacy's coven several times in the last few weeks, they were reasonable people.  Who knew how many people that his family had killed were just as reasonable?

“You're a very compassionate person-”

“That's not how my dad would put it.”  Sam scoffed at the compliment.  “He'd call me weak- he did call me weak.”

“There's nothing weak about having empathy.”  Neves countered.  “It takes a special sort of bravery to let yourself hurt for another animal.”

“Yeah.”  He nodded as he thought about his place on the hunting spectrum, somewhere in the grey area, then exhaled under his breath.  “Animals.”

* * *

“Growing up I always hated our lives- traveling all the time, all the fighting.  My dad expected us to fall in line and follow his every order- to fit his narrow view.  I can’t even tell you how scared I was that he’d find out I like men.  I don’t know if Dean would care.  I think he was a little more relaxed about that kind of stuff- He didn't ever say anything about it, so maybe he was better.”  Sam sighed at not knowing what his brother might think of him.  His fingertips dragged compulsively along one of the upholstery seams on Neves’ patient chair.  Maybe the old tic made it easier for him to talk?  “But my dad… I used to wonder what would happen if he found out about the men.  I like to think he wouldn’t have hit me- that he’d have just kicked me out.  I thought maybe it’d be easier if he disowned me, then I wouldn’t have to be the one to end it- I didn’t really want him to find out though.  I didn’t want to risk it.  I didn’t take chances, you know?  I was careful.  I learned how to lie and they were happy to ignore all the problems.”

“Did you lie to them about more than your aversion to violence and your orientation?”  Neves asked as she made a note on her pad of paper.

“And school.”

“I remember that your dad didn’t want you to go to college.”

“I could barely get through high school with the way he kept moving us around.”  Sam offered more context.  “Dean didn't graduate.  He was gonna try to get his GED, but he'd failed twice before I left.  I don't know if he would've kept trying or not.  Dad wasn't any help to him- the only education dad cared about was weapons training.”

“Do you think about your brother much?”

“Recently, yes.”  In the last two days he'd started wondering if Dean was somehow in danger or if his vision had actually been focused on the young man Dean had killed.  “I worry about Dean.  We had our differences- we fought, but I think that most of the time he was just trying to do what he thought was best for me.  Dad was too busy to really think about what any given choice meant for us- but Dean at least tried... I don’t know, what’s empathy called when it’s not super compassionate?”

“That’s being emotional.”

“I guess that’s one way of describing him.”  Sam would’ve probably described him as quiet.  Someone whose feelings had been buried out of necessity way too many times- but he had his outbursts, and surprisingly not all of them had been directed at Sam.  “Dean isn’t touchy feely though.  He likes to play tough- he liked to, I guess I don’t know what’s happened to him since I left.”

“I know you haven't been able to reach him when you've tried in the past.  It's possible that you won't know what happened to him.”  She was trying to keep him grounded, reminding him that the unfortunate situation might be indefinite.  He appreciated that as much as she offered him kind words, she never sugarcoated the hard truths. When he nodded in a gesture of resigned acknowledgement, Neves pursed her lips betraying some uncharacteristic hesitation regarding her next question.  “Do you feel guilty about leaving him alone with your father?”

He hadn't really thought about it before, but he supposed part of him did regret that aspect of how it had all happened.  He'd left through some small miracle, but Dean had stayed behind to become who knows what kind of person.  The vision had shown Dean shooting a bound man who was begging for his life and his first instinct was to think that Dean was the one in danger.  What if this was Sam’s chance and once again he wouldn't be able to save him?

His heart sank a bit at the reminder of his self-doubt.  He was scared he wouldn’t be able to save Dean, or all those people, or even himself.  There was so much riding on him and he felt like there couldn’t have been a worse person to have that responsibility.  He was only twenty three.  He wasn’t well- whether it was an illness, a cognitive behavioral disorder, or some sort of demonic affliction- whatever the cause it was a burden he felt many times each day.  It’d been years since he’d been in combat and his resources were barely starting to paint a rough image of the world around him-  

And with all those things stacked against him, he felt like he was the only one that stood even a remote chance of saving himself- and saving the others.  To his knowledge, no one else had even gleaned what was happening.  No one else was going to do anything about this.  That hauntingly familiar weight was on him, the pressure to save someone.  It’d been years since he’d faced those stakes and he was terrified that he’d fail again.

“Yeah.”  Sam said quietly.  “Despite everything, I wish I could've saved Dean.”

“Sam, I know how compassionate you are, it's one of your strengths.  But you can’t save others if you can't save yourself.”  Neves offered, pulling him slightly from his bleak thoughts.  “You've got to learn to forgive yourself.  You can't carry the whole world on your shoulders.  I know you're feeling overwhelmed, but you’ve got to take care of yourself and just try your best.”

“Sometimes I think I'm okay- like I think I can take care of myself.  I know rationally what to do, but pride, happiness, the things I know I need to hold onto slip away so fast.”  Sam tried to articulate his depression in its most basic terms.  “I want to forgive myself, to say ‘Look how much you've done, even with all this shit that’s happening.  It's okay to struggle.’ but there's this part of me that knows it's not good enough, even if maybe it is.”

“This might be a struggle that you face throughout your life.  What's important is to find a way to manage it.”  Neves put her pen to a clean corner of the pad of paper on her desk, ready to make some notes.  “Are you keeping up on your treatment plan?”

“I’ve… I've been trying not to take...”  The guilt he was feeling was a bad sign.  He was about to undercut his credibility with her, but there wasn’t a way to avoid it short of lying and he wouldn’t do that to her.  “I was thinking about drinking and I got worried I'd take too much of my meds… So I was trying to avoid taking them.”

“It's not uncommon for people to overcompensate like that.”  She tried to reduce his embarrassment.  “But as long as they're helpful to you I think you should keep taking them as prescribed.”

He nodded in agreement.  There wasn't a good way to create an allegory to his fear that the medication might interfere with his powers- he wasn't even sure whether that concern even had any merit.  He’d been having typical visions & migraines throughout the last two days.  He just hadn’t taken anything to dull the pain.

“Sam, I have to ask you-”

“Just ask.”  He already knew what she was getting at.

“Do you think there's a chance you'll try to hurt yourself?”

“No, I don't think so.”  Sam answered with a confidence that he found reassuring.  “I don't want to hurt anyone, even myself.  Anyway, if anything happened to me… I don't want to think what it would do to Brady.”

“You have more people than just Brady who care about you.”

“Stacy barely knows me outside of fucking and-”  He'd almost said magic, but caught himself.  “My family, they wouldn't even notice if I was dead.”

“Do you really think they wouldn't care?”

He could picture it now.  His dad & brother coming to town to investigate what had killed him.  In the process they'd inevitably meet Brady, who'd probably turn aggressive in his grief just as he had when Jessica had died- but this would be worse.  Brady would've lost his second lover in just a few years and Sam had always been Brady's favorite.  So his dad & Dean would find out that Sam was bisexual from a grief mad Brady, who'd only ever heard Sam's vague horror stories about home.  Somebody would end up in prison, the hospital, or the ground- maybe one of each of the above.

“Honestly, I hope they don't care.”  Sam replied.  “I hope they stay away and never know about all this.  At least one thing in my life would be simple then.  What I wouldn’t give to have something be clear cut for once.”

“Is there any part of your life that you can make simpler?  Put the details to the side for a moment.”  She waved her hand to signify clearly the slate.  “In the simplest terms, what do you want from life?”

“To make a difference.”  He answered after a few seconds of consideration.  “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to make a difference if… if I don’t have much time.”

“Do you think trying to make a difference is worthwhile in and of itself?”  

She was trying to give him something to fall back on, a foundation upon which to rebuild.  The attempt was appreciated.  He considered whether he could value to journey & the struggle even if he never reaches his goal.  At the moment he didn’t even know what the end of his desired path might even look like.  All that he had was the unknown, the journey, the struggle.

“I’m still scared.”  His voice cracked a bit on the words.

“You’re allowed to feel scared.”  Neves smiled sadly at him.  “Anyone would be scared.  The question is whether you’re going to let that fear stop you from living the life you’ve been dealt and trying to make a difference in the world.”

“What happens if I can’t pull this off?”

“I know you aren’t feeling very confident right now, but you’re incredibly capable.  You need to work on forgiving yourself and giving yourself more credit.  No one is perfect.  Just try to be good, don’t try to be perfect.”

“What if the world is telling that I’m not good?”

“What does the world know?”  Neves put her pen down and leaned forward to speak to him with an intense sincerity.  “Sam, take a step back and look at yourself.  Do you think you’re a bad person?”

“No.”

* * *

Sam went for a walk after his therapy appointment to try clearing his head.  In some ways he felt a bit better having gotten several of his fears at least partially expressed, but the entire conversation had left him emotionally raw.  Walking through the campus at dusk he felt a subtle wrongness that he couldn’t identify.  If he had to take a guess it was the out of place sensation that he’d had during his first semester of undergrad.  He should’ve been worrying about all of the normal college problems.  It was just a few days before Valentine's Day, he should've been worrying about whether to do anything special with Brady or been in a panic studying for midterms, which were just a week away.  But he was thinking about demons, witches, matters of life & death.  He supposed he might be thinking about those things for the rest of his life.  Without knowing a way of stripping the demonic mark from his soul, he’d always have to be attentive to those things on some level.  He didn’t get to have the innately simple life, but it remained to be seen whether he could find a way to manage his burdens and maybe even strive for something more.  

He walked the weaving paths that cut across campus at least a dozen times.  It was probably almost midnight and he could see his own breath from the cold, but part of him was still scared to go back to his dorm room.  The last thing he needed was to lay awake in bed for the next four hours, unable to sleep- actually the last thing he needed was to attempt self-medicating away his insomnia in his desperation.  Instead he continued walking off his nervous energy while trying to work up the courage to be alone with himself & his insecurities.

Sam was amending his mental to do list for the fifth time when all of a sudden he got the feeling that something was watching him.  He stopped and looked around the dimly lit quad, but didn’t see anything.  When he closed his eyes to focus on listening for movement, he didn’t hear anything- he felt it, about ten feet to his right. He’d experienced cold spots with ghosts, but this was different.  It wasn’t a tactile sensation, it was more like a profound intuition.  The presence moved away from him, down a walkway that wrapped around a building.  For a moment he hesitated to follow it, to give in to his fears or delusions- but maybe they weren’t delusions after all.  Maybe they never had been?

He followed the walkway around the corner of the building and saw a female undergrad leaning against the side of an exterior staircase.  At first he didn’t think much of the scene, but standing there observing her for a few seconds he got the sense that something was off.  Her body swayed subtly and her knee bent a few times in anticipation of going up the stairs, though she didn't seem to have either the will or coordination to attempt it.  She was breathing through her mouth with some effort.  Her hand gripped the arm rail with the tension of someone trying not to fall over.

“Excuse me?”  He called out to her as he approached, hoping to avoid startling her.  She didn't even look at him.  As he moved closer to her he could feel that strange presence lingering nearby, watching them.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”  She said in a groggy voice

“You sure?  You look-”  The girl tried go up the stairs, but her heel missed a step and she fell backwards.  Sam ran the last few feet to catch her.  He caught her, but his hands touched her bare arms and he was overcome with a splitting headache & a flash of light.

Everything was too bright.  The girl was crumpled on the third floor landing of the staircase.  She’d slipped and fallen down a flight to that obscured place where no one would find her until morning.  Her leg was bent awkwardly, probably broken.  A two inch long cut on her forehead was starting to swell.  But the thing that did it was when she threw up and couldn't turn her head to the side.  That's what killed her.

Sam was trembling as he held her, having just caught her at the bottom of the first staircase.  He had to fight the impulse to clutch her tightly- he didn't want to accidentally hurt or scare her.  She had no idea about the vision he'd just seen.

It was different than the other visions he'd had.  At first he didn't understand what was different about it, but his instincts offered up an unsettling thought.  The vision of her death didn’t feel familiar in the same way that the others did.  The whole scene had a different hue about it, a foreign sensation.  She wasn’t like the other dead people.  She was supposed to go to a different place.  She didn't belonged to his Hell.  He wasn’t sure why he could see her death- except that it was so close.  It was almost oppressively close.  She was supposed to die just twenty feet away, maybe in only minutes.  Sam glanced up at the stair landing where she was supposed to die, then he slowly turned to look in the direction where the unseen presence was waiting.

“Let… go.”  She groaned

“I’m not gonna hurt you.  You almost fell over.  I'm worried about you.”  Sam said in a gentle voice as he helped lower her to the ground.  “We’re just gonna sit down for a minute, okay?”

“What?”  Her eyes didn't focus on him, then her eyelids started closing.

“Hold on, okay.  I’m gonna get you some help.”  He laid her down so that she couldn't fall, resting her head on his leg.  After a moment he remembered that she'd choked to death on her own vomit, so he rolled her onto her side.  He held her steady with his offhand while calling 911 on his cell, then he sat there with her, running his fingers through her hair.  When she started gagging, he pulled her hair back out of her face and leaned her forward so that she wouldn’t choke.

“It’s okay, just let it out.”  He told her in a comforting tone.  As she threw up, Sam sat staring at the empty space where the presence lingered.  He wasn't sure what he'd do if it came any closer.

The sound of sirens and the ambulance’s flashing lights were a relief.  He gently squeezed her bare arm in reassurance, but also experimentation.  There was no vision of her on the staircase landing, it had faded away to some other place hopefully many years in the future.  When the EMTs took her out of Sam’s arms and began examining her, Sam noticed that the unseen presence was gone.  One of the EMTs crouched down in front of Sam.  She reached out to touch Sam's arm.  He reflexively jerked away, scared that the contact would trigger another vision, but it didn’t.

“Did you two take anything?”  The EMT asked him.

“I don't know her.  I found her.”  Sam explained through a slight daze.  “I- I was scared she'd die.”

“It's a good thing you called.”  The EMT commented while looking Sam over.  “You seem pretty shook up.  Do you live near here?  Is there someone you can call to stay with you for a few hours?”

“Yeah.”  Sam reached out and touched the EMT’s uncovered wrist experimentally.  He was trying to trigger a vision, but nothing came.  “Thank you.”

He called Brady, explained what had happened, then asked him to come down right away.  He was too worn out to try walking back to his place and instead opted to wait for Brady to pick him up.  The EMT checked on him one last time before they left to take the girl to the hospital.  Sitting there on the sidewalk under a streetlight and partially covered in a stranger’s vomit- maybe he was in shock, but he actually felt a bizarre calm.

That girl was going to die- she was supposed to die, but she didn’t.  He'd changed her future.  He’d saved her life.  He’d saved someone’s life and he hadn’t even needed to kill anyone to do it.  Looking down at his hands he considered his visions in a new light.  If he could actually change the future and stop his visions from coming true, then maybe that changed everything.  He started crying as he realized that he felt a little less scared.


End file.
